Paul Dacier is one of the rare general counsel who somehow managed to avoid doing any significant time at a law firm before going in-house.

After graduating from Marquette University's law school in 1983, Dacier, the executive vice president and general counsel of EMC Corp., a data-storage solutions provider, spent a year at a small law firm outside Milwaukee working mostly on litigation. But Dacier was as interested in business as he was in law and, in 1984, took a job as a staff lawyer at Apollo Computer Inc.

The Massachusetts company was a high flyer on Wall Street, having just introduced the first networked computer workstations. But when HP acquired Apollo in 1989, Dacier left to become EMC's first general counsel.